High-speed, high-bandwidth communications are increasingly in demand as populations and population densities increase. Distributed wireless networks composed of multiple locally-communicating Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) nodes and/or directional, beam-steered/formed antenna distributions may be able to meet this demand. Each node may be used to convey network communications between, e.g., an Internet backbone and various end user devices. The distributed nodes may be particularly useful in dense urban areas or in remote locations lacking substantial infrastructure. The nodes can be installed and managed by local residents, facilitating a versatile solution adaptive to the needs and circumstances of a particular community.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy “link budget” when deploying outdoor millimeter wave (mmW) communications. A link budget is an accounting of all gains and losses between a transmitter and a receiver. Increases in power and/or beamforming (BF) gain in the transmit portion of the link may be quickly saturated by effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) limits. Accordingly, there is a need for more efficient and effective receiver solutions.
While the flow and sequence diagrams presented herein show an organization designed to make them more comprehensible by a human reader, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the actual data structures used to store this information may differ from what is shown in that they, for example, may be organized in a different manner, may contain more or less information than shown, may be compressed and/or encrypted, etc.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the claimed embodiments. Further, the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments. Moreover, while the various embodiments are amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the embodiments are intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed embodiments as defined by the appended claims.